West Europeans, generally speaking, do not share America's ambitions of vast global reform or visions of history coming to an end. They had enough of that kind of thinking, and its consequences, with Marxism and Nazism.

They are interested in a slow development of civilized and tolerant international relations, compromising on problems while avoiding catastrophes along the way. They have themselves only recently recovered from the catastrophes of the first and second world wars, when tens of millions of people were destroyed. They don't want more.

American commentators like to think that the "Jacksonian" frontier spirit equips America to dominate, reform and democratize other civilizations. They do not appreciate that America's indefatigable confidence comes largely from never having had anything very bad happen to it.

That's a good point. I come from a country that has existed for more than a thousand years and that has been in many wars, a country that was occupied by the Nazis while my mom was growing up, and people were being sent off to concentration camps. However terrible Vietnam was, it wasn't happening on American soil. However terrible 9-11 was, for most Americans it wasn't really something the country felt on its skin for long enough to grow wise from it. It was mainly something on TV that then got projected violently outwards. It could have been a transformative event that gave America a heart, and it was close, and it felt like it for a while, but it unfortunately ended up being taken in a different direction.